For many of the journalists who work alongside foreign correspondents in China, as Zhang did, the saga also offered a stark reminder of their unacknowledged and often perilous position under the Chinese rules that govern their employment. On the one hand they get little recognition for their indispensable roles in helping to tell the world important stories about China, and are often barely known to the distant management of the papers they work for.

“We hold up half the sky in foreign media—basically they cannot run without us,” says Zhang, 32, who resigned from NRC after posting his allegations against Garschagen, in a phone interview.

At the same time they face scrutiny, pressure and suspicion from their own government—and sometimes from their own compatriots as well.

[…] Invitations from security agents to “drink tea” are understood by news assistants to be compulsory. Security agents ask about what stories their foreign correspondents are working on, and assistants say they usually answer honestly, describing these meetings as generally relaxed and friendly. “After all, we have nothing to hide,” says Huang, a former news assistant who asked to be identified only by his last name, “but I definitely won’t reveal information about my sources.” The Beijing-based assistant says the correspondents he worked with never asked what happens at those meetings, because “they understand it’s tough to be caught in the middle.” [Source]

The 39-year-old journalist, identified only by his surname Wang, has been detained on suspicion of “faking the facts and spreading rumors” after he wrote an article titled “32 Students Mysteriously Disappear in Wuhan,” featuring interviews with their family members, the Beijing Youth Daily newspaper reported.

Wuhan police issued a directive on Thursday saying that the content of his article was inaccurate and had been deleted at the request of the father of missing Wuhan student Lin Feiyang, the paper said.

It said police in Wuhan’s Jianghan district had detained a male, 39 years old, surnamed Wang, under administrative detention. [Source]